


For Want of a Shovel

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Category: Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: AU, Abuse, Bonding through Adversity, Drug Addiction, F/M, Hill Wins, Hill is a twisted fuck, Humiliation, M/M, Meg Lives, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 15:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8537614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: Dr. Hill's mesmeric powers were strong. If Herbert West hadn't wrenched himself free at the crucial moment, events in Arkham would have played out quite differently.Now, Herbert and his housemate Megan Halsey go through their days in a haze of grief, anger, and pacifying chemical fog, under the thumb of their "kind benefactor."On the bright side, some things never change. They just get harder.





	

Things could be worse.

Theoretically.

Herbert wasn’t entirely sure *how,* but then, his thinking wasn’t what it had once been. His… breakdown… had left him less certain.

(He could be in prison. That would be worse. He could be dead, like Hans.)

Things could be better, though. That he  _ was _ certain of, when the room spun and his teeth hurt in his skull and the person sponging sweat from his brow had barbiturate-dilated blue eyes and smelled of the same cologne Herbert did.

Neither of them wore it.

Both of them hated the scent.

He still had his work, after a fashion, still had a basement. No school--he’d been told maybe next year, maybe the one after.

He was past thirty already, almost halfway to the grave if he didn’t succeed, and his thinking wasn’t what it had been.

(He could be insane, like his cousin. He could be dead, like Dan.)

He was cold, down in the basement. The cold hadn’t bothered him before; he used to sweat it all out, but this basement wasn’t the same as the one at home.

(Less than a month. Not home. This is home now.)

"Count," said a voice less patient than exhausted. "Three in, five out. Control your breathing." They could both do that.

He considered snapping at her - he had before, in the first week. That was how he knew that she'd leave him down here if he crossed into what she considered rude behavior (which had been everything he did, before, and encompassed only slightly less now). 

He did as he was told. The fact that doing so was becoming easier was the most bitter pill of all.   
"I'll talk to him," she said.

"Don't bother," he hissed through clenched teeth. He still had that much pride. If he could ride this out, he'd be free. There'd be nothing to hold over him. He could leave what he'd accomplished and start over, remembering and rebuilding. He'd done it before. No restrictions, no threat of theft.   
No funding, no supplies.

“I can make him go easier.” Her hands were neither warm nor cold--just  _ there _ , touching. Caring, almost, from some strange basic idea that he deserved it just for being human and alive, when those were so clearly not enough.

He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

Then again, he hadn’t done anything to  _ stop _ deserving it, either, besides destroying her life.

“You don’t  _ talk _ .” He shouldn’t have said it; she had pride, the same as him, or so he’d learned. She reared back as though struck, and he tried in vain to capture her wrist--his hand wavered as sickness washed over him.

“Fuck you,” the nicest girl snapped, and he swallowed bile and the obvious response.

“You--you shouldn’t. For me.” He panted and she took a step towards the door. He had pride, more than to accept it. “It’s not exhaustion. I can manage.”

And it worked. She took care of him, feeding him sips of water and resentful ‘compassion’ until Hill returned at seven o’clock with a story about being delayed at work, so sorry, quite forgot.

Herbert’s body felt as though it were shaking apart at the seams, like a dozen corpses stitched together and pulling themselves apart through sheer will and disgust. It was his own fault Hill had found out about the injections. His own carelessness had given him a rope to hang by. Hans would have been ashamed of him. 

It had all happened so quickly, Afterward. His neck had been on the line before kind, magnanimous Dr. Hill had offered to take him in, and the grieving Miss Halsey too. A pillar of the community, going out of his way to protect two not-so-young lives. 

The chemicals were kept far away, but if Hill had remembered.

He showered. He brushed his teeth until his gums bled.

Hill disliked untidiness in his research assistants.

He couldn't be expected to work like this, is what he meant to say. It was a mockery of his talents and his work,  _ his _ work, to be kept and tethered here like a dog. 

Hill held out his hand, and Herbert relinquished his notes. They were spidery and almost illegible toward the end, ruined by trembling.

"I'm disappointed." That deep, treacherous voice was made for sounding it. "This isn't up to your usual standards."

Herbert gritted his teeth. He felt sick, and it had nothing to do with the withdrawal. 

"I expect better. Is this all the great Herbert West can do on his own?"

"You've crippled me and you know it. At least have the decency to gloat openly," he sneered.

Hill's facade of paternal disappointment dropped, becoming the cold look that he'd given Herbert the first day in that ludicrous class. "Any incompetent could follow Gruber's instructions. Be glad I kept you here and didn't have you thrown in with Halsey."

"Be careful. She's probably listening." He bared his teeth. "As you say, any incompetent. Which doesn't say much for you, does it."

Hill locked eyes with him, and Herbert sank under the same overpowering compulsion that had held him still the night Hill came to his lab. He needed suddenly to retch, to fall to his knees. Sweat was pouring down his back. It wasn't real. He was stronger. His will was indomitable. 

He fell, barely able to cover his mouth before the dry heaving began. Hill had been practicing his little mind trick, and Herbert had been goaded into letting his guard down. 

"How pathetic." Hill nudged him with his shoe. 

Herbert wanted to kill him. He should have before. He should've been stronger then, too.

“I’m not medicated,” Herbert growled. “Wasn’t that a condition of your--” his stomach lurched “-- _ caring _ for me?”

“And here I’d thought to wean you off. Mind over matter, isn’t it?” Hill’s long hand wrapped about Herbert’s lower jaw, hot. “Have you no  _ will _ to summon?”

“I’m dangerous,” Herbert snarled, feeling anything but in that grip. How he hated. “Isn’t that common knowledge?”

“You’re weak.” Hill’s smile was wide, even white teeth like well-kempt tombstones. Nothing like Arkham’s cemeteries.

His shoes were shiny, oxblood glossy in Herbert’s face. He smelled leather and polish when he was dropped like garbage to the floor.

It  _ hurt _ .

“Shame. I had such high hopes,” Hill continued, toe carelessly nudging Herbert’s cheek as he flipped noisily through his notes. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that you really theorize, without your messy experiments.” He sighed loudly, resignation on the outrush of air, and turned to walk away to Megan.

His shoe, Cordovan leather, slid out from beneath Herbert, blessed relief from that sensation.

Herbert clutched a cuff of grey pinstripe wool, seeing his hand act from somewhere distant.

“Wait.”

"Yes?" Hill's surprise was feigned, like the rest of him. The man was a long con, literal and figurative. A dirty plagiarist who deserved whatever Herbert could concoct. But not like this.

"I..." He wouldn't beg. He  _ wouldn't _ . "If your intellect is really superior, then it should be no threat to let me work at my full capacity." 

"So speaks an addict. I'm only--"

"I know the spring conference is coming up. You have nothing to show for it, do you? You've been too busy crowing over your little cuckoldry." He dragged himself up as best he could, drenched and shaking. "Let me work. Bring me something I can work  _ with _ . You'll get your precious results."

Hill shook his leg loose, but he didn't leave. "What guarantee do I have you won't concoct some little scheme?" 

"I want to work. Whatever you think you've made me do, your little tricks have nothing to do with it." Not the strongest statement to make from the floor. "I'm not some drooling idiot like Halsey. You can't force me. So you'd better learn to bargain." 

"I see." Hill's eyes were coldly amused, and when he went up the stairs it was only long enough to fetch a long and familiar needle. Herbert was shaking too badly to apply it himself, but he didn't ask for help. He thought of Dan, saw Dan's disappointed but acquiescing face in a foggy hallucination as Hill gripped his arm and shoved the needle under his skin. Dan.

"D--" The jolt caught up to his tongue before he could humiliate himself any further, and he felt himself come alive. His heart was beating fast, too fast; his fingers were itching. He didn't bother saying anything to Hill before bolting back to his pathetic little playset of chemicals. 

The work. The work was what mattered now. 

 

~*~*~*~

 

Meg had always sort of planned on getting married, in the same way she'd figured she'd go to college long enough for an undergrad, and probably live in Arkham until she died. Those had been the things Dad had wanted for her, and all of her annoyance and rebellion seemed petty now that he was…

She could still do something for him. There had to be hope. She was under the roof of the foremost minds in medical science. She'd learned to be strong for her dad after her mother had died; she could keep it up a little longer. 

This was how she lied to herself when she scrubbed her skin until it was red and raw, when she stared too long into the distance while the medication for her "anxiety" diffused her ability to plan for more than a few minutes into the future. In those moments, she'd wind up thinking of Dan. 

She'd gone to tell him it was over. Whatever bullshit he'd spun wasn't good enough this time, and did he really think she was that stupid? He'd always thought she was airheaded; everyone did, in that almost benign way where they smiled when she spoke and then ignored what she'd actually said. But when she'd gotten there, the door had been unlocked. That dreadful little troll Herbert West hadn't been able to stand that, she remembered, whining on about his probably stolen equipment.

She’d known where to go, despite herself. Through the living room, down the hall, and into the basement where they’d been doing whatever to poor Rufus. And there had been  _ sounds _ as she put her feet to the slatted stairs.

(She’d always hated stairs like that--as a child, her mother had had to coax her down, swearing nothing would grab her ankles from the gaps between.)

Sobbing, and something wet.

West must still have scars on his shoulder from her father’s teeth. She hadn’t seen them since Carl took them in, but the bloody rawness had burned into her memory when it happened. He’d been crouching, deranged, over Dan, button-down shirt red-and-brown with gore as Dad gnashed and growled.

She’d probably have snapped, too, if she’d seen  _ that _ happen. Dan, in his old Adidas shirt, with his throat torn out and West’s tears all over him.

She’d still kicked him in the face, and to his credit he’d taken it, despite shrieking all the while about his experiments.

Dad had--he’d calmed, for her. He was biddable. She hadn’t seen him since that night, either.

She’d thought West was around the bend, and said so during the investigation.

Thinking he could  _ fix _ Dan.

Since being here… she wasn’t so sure.

About anything.

She didn’t want her pill, but Carl counted them, so she risked washing one down the sink while he worked with West. He hadn’t switched her to injections just yet.

It still sounded absurd to say, that as a grown woman she'd need someone to care for her. But at the time she hadn't known what to do. The matters of her dad’s affairs were beyond her; she could barely think of him without feeling like she might cry, never mind figuring out where he could best be cared for and what to do with his house. She hadn't wanted to stay there, with all the memories of her parents waiting for her. Anything was better than that. 

"Anything" turned out to be Carl Hill, who came in smooth as water with suggestions and a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She'd always felt uneasy when he touched her, for reasons she couldn't put down to more than instinct. When she was 10 he'd put a hand on her head to compliment how tall she'd grown, and kept it there, stroking her hair. He'd never touched her anywhere she could show on a doll, but he had a talent for making elbows and shoulders feel exposed and dirty. He'd been the one to suggest "something for her nerves," and she'd needed it the first time she saw West again. 

She’d avoided looking at him during the deposition. She’d hardly been able to believe it when she heard he was under the same roof as her. It was a trick of the same “kindness” that made her feel so uneasy, taking on a new and horrific form. 

He'd looked as blank as she felt until she came near; closer, closer, until she could slap him across the face.    
"This is your fault!" If he hadn't come to the door just as Dan was trying to spite her, if he hadn't dragged Dan into his sick experiments, all of it would be different now. 

"Typical hysterics." He seemed even more remote now, talking like he hadn't made those animal sobs. "You--" She'd heard footsteps behind her, and West's face had twisted into a rage, eyes almost popping from his head. "You." He'd repeated, not for her at all. 

He'd gone for Carll, and Meg had thought she might see her second murder in a week (she was sick of blood, so sick of blood), but Carl had grasped the top of the diminutive little man's head with his large hand; West, like a stringless puppet, had fallen to the floor unconscious. 

"You shouldn't be down here, Megan. It's dangerous." He'd led her upstairs, brushing off her questions like she was incapable of understanding the answers. He'd put his hand on her knee, saying that it must've been terrible, that she needn't be alone in all this. 

She'd needed the pills after that.

Now--she felt fuzzy, always, and distracted. Her studies had failed, but that hadn’t surprised anyone given the givens. So  _ thoughtful _ of Carl to take her in, asking nothing in return.

She should have started dinner hours ago.

He’d have to settle for TV dinners; she threw two onto the counter. West wouldn’t eat. He hardly ever did. She couldn’t blame him, given how hard it was for  _ her _ to choke down her allotted calories day-to-day.

(She could blame him. She did.)

 

~*~*~*~

 

True to his word for a change, Hill returned with tissue samples and a few of the base components of the reagent. It wasn't enough, and they both knew it. Herbert and Dan had progressed to full human subjects; now wasn't the time to be regressing to playing with cats and staring into microscopes. Scientific history was made by sacrifice. Hans had understood that. Had died for it, and left no one but Herbert to avenge his stolen legacy. Look how well that had ended. 

The diluted reagent (bogarted, no doubt, from what he’d made beforehand; Hill wasn’t smart enough to brew the stuff on his own, or Herbert’s corpse would be in a ditch) in his blood kept him humming along for the better part of two days without need for food or sleep, and only the occasional glass of water. The parts proved more fascinating than he had expected, yielding a will to live despite lacking a connection to a higher functioning organ. It was life, all of it. Half hallucinating on lack of sleep, he turned to tell Dan about it...and remembered. 

He should've been faster. He'd been foolish to lose track of Dean Halsey, even for those few days. That had been enough to let Hill turn the tables on him. And Dan--

Dan had protected him. In spite of everything, including the fight they'd been having over the future of the reagent. Dan, in the middle of spouting some moralistic tripe born out of his lingering shock, had forgotten all of it. He’d yelled for Herbert to run. Herbert had turned to look for a weapon, only to find his feet frozen to the ground. 

Under the animal fight-or-flight was a deep paralysis, a need for stillness as if he were a rabbit trapped in the eyes of a predator. His vocal cords had locked up. He'd felt Dan's blood on his face, somehow different from Halsey's blood or even Dr. Gruber's, even though they were made of the same components.    
He tried not to think of his failures. They were part of the scientific process, and dwelling on them only held a person back. He didn't have time to wail over it like Meg. 

Though he hadn't heard her crying lately.

Meg was permitted more freedom than Herbert. Hill liked roles, and rules, so Meg was given a small allowance for the purchase of household needs and beauty products.

He checked her receipts and kept the change.

If she was the ‘wife,’ Herbert wasn’t sure what he was, besides a slave.

The work was worth it, he told himself when the high wore thin. Herbert had a responsibility to those he’d failed.

Too often he tried to consult his old notes, only to recall too late that they weren’t there. 

_ “Work from memory,” Hill had told him, folding the black notebook into his pocket. “You’re brilliant, are you not?” _

Hill must not realize how much less trustworthy Herbert’s memory was, now.

He was achieving  _ some _ effect; quite fascinating really how the guinea pigs and dog were responding, but it felt retreaded.

They screamed until he cut their vocal cords, thrashed until he cut their tendons. He tested pain responses and instincts, pushing the throbbing in his skull back.

They feared fire.

How cliched.

Meg bandaged the burn on his arm without looking him in the eye or asking.

“Just an accident,” he said nonetheless, awkward with the gentleness.

“You need to be more careful,” she muttered. Her throat flexed with a swallow, her frosted lips pressing into a line. Her eye makeup was smeared from watering.

“I’ll be fine.” He flexed it, feeling the press against the hot-dull spots, thinking about the things in the basement. “Do you--” he stuttered to silence.

She looked at him, too slowly, and he expected her to wander away. Instead she responded. “Do I what?”   
“Do you--If you need any… medical procedures… I may not be licensed, but I have enough supplies.”

She looked shocked, though the expression was muted and slow. Her hand brushed against her stomach and didn't linger. "I'll keep it in mind."

Herbert went outside only occasionally, no farther than the little bit of plastic around his ankle would permit. He thought about the shrieking things in his little corner of the world, and what Dan would say (he would say something; Herbert had worked as fast as he could with stitching; with the brief window where he had access, however illegal, to the proper tubes and chemicals). He had time, but not much.

He'd made the fool mistake of trying to plead his case only the once, putting on the shaken and guileless face that had gotten him out of trouble in Switzerland and again in the morgue. Third time was no longer the charm, it seemed, and he'd paid for it later. The door to the cellar had been locked, and he had been left to his own devices until thirst and filth were the better part of what he was. 

Hill hadn't even commented on it except to smile when he finally showed himself, as if this were the best that could be expected, as if this were Herbert's natural state. 

He began to write the useful observations in his work in the margins of unassuming, dogeared mementos, using his own invented shorthand, and storing them around the pathetic excuse for a lab. When Hill came looking for the promised results, Herbert handed him a notebook as incomplete and fragmentary as he felt himself. He hadn't lost power yet. This was a battle of wills; he might bend, but he wouldn't break.

The thing was, Hill was always  _ impressed _ , however he tried to hide it. His eyes would widen, or his fingertips go soft and careful on the pages. He would sit down, peer and double-check results. The dolt’s subtlest reactions constantly reinforced just how far below Herbert’s level he was.

And his casual dismissal of Herbert reinforced how he kept Herbert trapped under his foot all the same.

Sometimes the solution didn’t work, at least not the way Herbert remembered it. It used to be a punch to the solar plexus, followed by liquid gold in his body and mind.

Now--there was a sickening lethargy sometimes, a creeping dull lassitude competing with the energy. Either there was something different about Herbert, or something different about what Hill  _ permitted _ him to take. And it had been too long, this time. He could feel sleep creeping and threatening, a death lying just behind his eyelids--a chance to practice for failure, and to visit memories of all he’d lost before. How many days had it been, he wondered as he rubbed his hands up and down on his thighs. How many weeks.

How much of his shortening life.

“Well?” he asked at last, tamping down the crazy urge to tackle Hill and wrestle his dose from the pockets of his suit. *Someone* was tamping it down, at any rate.

"Garbage." 

"What did you say?" Herbert snarled.

"I'm not interested in your garbage." Hill let the notebook fall from his hand and ground it beneath his shoe. "I know Gruber's work better than you do. You're passing off his rejected theories."

"I'm working within these pathetic, arbitrary restraints!"

"If you underestimate your rivals,  _ Mr. _ West, you deserve to be obsolete," Hill said.

"When I have someone worthy of the title, I'll remember your advice." His knuckles were white. It took all his energy to keep himself from shaking.

"During our initial agreement," how dare he call it that, when Herbert could still feel his bones being weighted down and his tongue turned to styrofoam, "you were ready to kill me rather than give up your research. It would've been intriguing if you'd had the guts to try it. But we both know what kind of man you are."

Herbert glared, unwilling to give the satisfaction of reacting to this little monologue. 

"And now you bring me a supposed breakthrough without breaking a sweat when I destroy it." Sure enough, the letters beneath his foot were smeared and illegible. "So tell me: Where are you hiding the rest of it?"

"There isn't anything else. You crippled me, because you know my intellect is greater than yours could ever hope to be." He got to his feet, swaying only for a second. "I'm tired of this pointless game."

"So am I." That calm demeanor was the most infuriating. That smug face. 

"So we're done here." He could make it on his own. Somehow.

"Almost," Hill said. "I want you to listen to me."

And Herbert did. Not for lack of trying -- he tried to think of other things, to shut his ears, but it was as if they were slithering in and wrapping tight around his brain.

"Look at me."

He obeyed, fighting panic. It has been this total, this overwhelming, only once. The day he'd let Dan die. He couldn't move his hands, his feet, and that drove him into an animal frenzy behind the walls of his eyes.

"I am not a charity, Mr. West. I don't intend to allow you to waste my supplies or my time. Whatever you're thinking of doing, rest assured it's pointless. Your reputation, if you could call it that, is quite destroyed. The death of Miskatonic's brightest saw to that."

"You--"

"Be quiet." And Herbert was. "You have nowhere to go outside these walls. No school will have you. One word from me, and they'll have you in a padded cell for the rest of your days, if I am kind, and in the electric chair if I am not. So it is in your best interest to prove yourself worth the expenditure."

Hill grabbed Herbert's tie, pulling until it was taut around his throat. "One way or the other, I expect compensation."

“I.” Hill smelled like chemicals and death, under the cologne. Smelled like everything Herbert needed, was  _ dying _ for. There was mint or licorice on his breath. “I don’t,” he stuttered, brain skipping like a scratched record. “You want--money? I could… If I had more components… “

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hill said, laughing. “I have access to all the funding I could ever want--not to mention other  _ legal _ sources. The last thing either of us needs is for you to have further access to your… vices.”

“Then--”

“The fact is, you have nothing to offer that I want. Do you?”

Herbert was released, sent sprawling to the concrete (though not before clipping his hip on the corner of a table on the way down. The pain was distant, warmth more than anything else.)

“I wonder what little Meg has been up to today,” Hill said, and.

It was something. A hint.

Herbert was a quick study.

He told himself it wasn’t all his choice, when he rose to his knees and pitched forward, catching his tormenter, benefactor, about the waist with shaking arms. How he hated.

It couldn’t be all that bad. Not if she did it.

And he was cold.

And Hill smelled…

Nothing clean. Nothing warm or human.

Nothing like the person Herbert had considered, in the vaguest possible terms, might be worth being… close to.

(That person would smell like this, now. Chemicals and death.)

Hill was looking down at him. Herbert avoided his eyes. "I think you've been lacking in proper motivation." Hill gripped Herbert's hair, pulling his head back until his neck ached. "My dear Megan convinces herself of what she wants to hear, but you and I are men of science. There's no need to mince words."

Herbert closed his eyes through the sound of buckles and zippers, opening them reluctantly when Hill tugged on his hair again. 

Hill's cock was short and round, a veiny purple surrounded by grey hair. 

"You clearly enjoyed running your mouth in my class." Hill seemed to relish the cliche of it all, the disgust on his captive's face. And the worst shame of all was when he let go, leaving Herbert to the hell of his own choice. "Unless you have more to say, i believe our business is concluded."

His pride screamed that anything was better than this, not just the strangeness of another human body (he'd never had any cause to put stock in the idiotic cultural concept of virginity anyway) but the humiliation of giving in. 

Grimacing, he reached out and took the warm, flaccid thing in his hand. This was distant. This he could handle. 

"Not bad for a start." The groan in Hill's voice made him shudder. "But you'll need to work harder than that. I'm surprised Gruber didn't teach you more. I would've expected it of him."

"How dare you--" Herbert started to rise off his knees.

"I dare everything. Because I. Won. It's time you accepted it." He was grinning, looking down at Herbert with an expression that had nothing to do with attraction, beyond the heady high of his own power. "Stop talking."

Herbert swallowed, taking stock of his options. There was a scalpel on the table--too far, with his legs still leaden, with how easily he was put under; he could make for the door, but odds were high he'd fall then and there, or else soon, from withdrawal. And he’d be on the run. Which left…

He knew empirically how it was done. The mechanics were simple enough, even if he'd never had much interest in them. He was tentative as he closed his mouth over that purple, swollen head, holding back his urge to gag.

He'd only barely adjusted before Hill's hand was on his neck, pushing him down until he choked and holding him there. His jaw ached, saliva dripping from his open mouth. For a moment, he couldn't breathe.

_ Shouldn’t _ breathe.

Didn’t deserve--

He swallowed frantically, figured out where to put his tongue, and Hill allowed him the time to readjust.

(He couldn’t fight back. He’d learned that, in the worst way. For all his  _ hate _ , he was powerless.)

Once he learned to breathe through his nose, Hill hummed approval. Fingers, in Herbert’s hair, and it was awful.

His stomach was empty; had been for days. He didn’t vomit as he moved up and down the hardening, horrible lump of skin and vessels.

Normally, the only bodies he touched were limp and lax with death. Soft. Cool.

(Megan was--different. Not like Dan, or Hans, but still  _ safe _ .)

Something in his mouth was salt and bitter, on the tongue he tried his best to leave flat. He sucked from desperation to end it, rather than a desire to please, and the thought of what went down his throat between each breath was a horror of its own.

And then, with his jaw and eyes burning, when time had long ceased to have any meaning--this was eternity, there couldn’t possibly be anything past it--he was flooded and invaded by stinking filth.

He choked, feeling it fill his mouth, his nose, burning until he managed to pull back and not so much spit as simply  _ drip _ it away.

"Well," Hill said as tucked himself in, "at least you were smart enough not to use your teeth." 

Herbert didn't bother with a response, too busy choking to get the awful taste out of his mouth. His first meal in days. 

"Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. West." Hill set a small fabric case on the edge of the workbench and climbed the stairs, not even hiding his laughter.

 

~*~*~*~

 

"I want to see him." She hadn't taken anything for the past day so that she could feel steady for this conversation. Instead, she felt like she was coming apart. 

"Megan," he used her name the way her mother had, tucking her hair behind her ear and all but clucking at her, "That's not a good idea."

She didn't slap his hand. She couldn't afford to. "I need to see how he's doing, I need to talk to him--"

"We've been over this before, my dear. After the unfortunate accident between your father and Mr. Cain, a frontal lobotomy was the only option."

"Liar." He was leading her into an easy thicket, trapping her, and she was letting herself fall for it. "You were there. You made him. I know it."

"I understand," said with the tone of the longsuffering and devoted. "You need an outlet for your grief. It's alright. But you'll feel better when you acknowledge that I was at the university that night."

So the witness reports read. "Megan," he drew her close, resting his hand low on her hip. "I want to help you. We only have each other now."

"Then why do you have  _ him _ living here?"

“Him--what, my assistant?” He sounded dismissive, as though there was nothing to keeping West in the house and enabling whatever habits were so clearly spinning out of control. But his eyes--

They showed white all around, and something like guilt. As though he could feel such a thing, with his knee sliding between hers.

He’d always loved having her on his lap; she’d been 14 the year she refused to sit with “Santa,” and Santa hadn’t been pleased. Neither had Dad, with Mom not a year dead. “Can’t one thing be normal?” he’d asked, and she hadn’t known how to explain that this wasn’t. Never had been.

“Herbert,” she ventured, limp and unresponsive while his hands moved up to her breasts. “If we’re alone--”

“He needs me,” he said, smiling, and she wondered how sick he had to be, to think she’d buy that. One captive believing their jailer regarding another.

How stupid did he think she  _ was _ ?

She buried her face in the pillows, chewing her lip to bruising to keep from crying out. If he’d just fuck her--

But his tongue was long and suedelike, and he seemed to enjoy  _ this _ better than anything. His arms  were so long, his hands running along her body and squeezing her breasts from all the way down there.

She hated it. Hated, hated,  _ hate _ \--

He kissed her after, forced her to taste it, and for once he didn’t make her do anything else. Only half-hard, she could feel, and maybe he was getting bored.

_ Please _ .

The next morning she found West lying on the living room couch.

Not sleeping.

He didn’t sleep, from what she could tell. Not since Hill brought him home from the hospital--she wasn’t sure he had a bed.

Just… staring.

His lip was cut, bloodless and unhealed, like a wound on a corpse. Or on her father.

It must be a bite from one of those  _ things _ he made.

"Do you want breakfast?" she asked as she passed. She didn't know why she'd said it, except that it was what she'd done after her mother's death. Make it normal, make it seem as if nothing had changed. Be a good girl, Megan, we're counting on you. 

"He's not here." West didn't look at her. "You don't need to play house." 

West had never played nice for anyone, was acid and bile and haughty dismissal...but that wasn't entirely true, was it. He'd softened whenever Dan was around, twining around him and playing like he was  _ harmless _ , like he was  _ reasonable _ . 

No wonder he'd killed Rufus. A jealous cat didn't like competition. 

She bit her lip. She avoided thinking of Dan whenever she could, grief warring with guilt in her chest. She'd been thinking of breaking up with him, way down in a place she hadn't been ready to admit (did she stay because her father would want her to leave? because Dan wanted her to stay? what did she want, anyway?). She couldn't tell anymore if Dan had made her happy, or if his death was only the point at which she couldn't pretend to herself any more. 

"You could do it," West was saying. "He thinks you're too weak to try. I suppose he's right."

“What do you mean?” she asked, playing as dumb as they all thought, but West’s eyes stabbed. Even before, he’d always looked at her with something like respect to back up the hate.

“You could kill him.” Casual, calm, everyday talk of murder. “There are a thousand things--poison’s a woman’s way, of course…”

“And you’d love to see a woman take the fall for that, wouldn’t you?” she spat, and he looked startled. At her bothering to react, perhaps.

“Quite the contrary. I’d help hide it. It’s simply that I  _ am _ too weak.” He clenched and released his hands, small fists still stronger than hers. She’d seen him shirtless; where he’d gotten those muscles didn’t bear considering.

“Why aren’t you ‘working?’” She didn’t intend the air quotes of contempt, but the pills made her tongue come unguarded at the worst times.

He smiled, lazy and almost proud.

“I made a choice. A matter of conscience, you could say; he’s reassigned me to other duties.” His dark chuckle was unhinged, and he covered his mouth when he laughed. Oddly prim.

“But--”

“Hm?” Staring at the ceiling, now, one leg drawn up. Socked foot on the couch, toe poking through a hole. He was never so calm.

“You love your--’work.’” Bitter, bitter, the idea of loving anything now. “It’s the only thing you care about.”

“Yes.” He rubbed the hollow of his elbow, and she pushed the sleeve up to see. He allowed it. Boundaries weren’t clear anymore, not with their brains so fuzzed by grief and chemistry. And she saw little circles, injection sites. Not healing. Not bleeding, either; just holes in skin. Soft, creased, nonthreatening skin of someone who talked about murder. When she’d stared too long, he shifted. “I love it too much to give it to him. It’s taken too much--he doesn’t deserve them.”

"If you'd just stop..." she didn't finish. She knew better. Willpower only went so far when you were on the edge of dying. You couldn't stand on that precipice alone, where the only other person was eagerly waiting to push you back in. 

"What day is it?" he asked, eyes closed at her gentle inspection. It was dangerously domestic for a pair of enemies. Strange bedfellows. 

"March 7th." 

He bolted upright, startling her when he just as quickly slumped over. "I see." 

He didn't elaborate, and she couldn't be bothered to ask. She washed down her bitterness with water over the kitchen sink. 

 

~*~*~*~

 

That day marked an obnoxious change. West started staying up in the house proper more, cluttering up the couch, reading trashy little books or staring at nothing (figured he was one of those types who generally ‘didn’t watch television,’ not even NOVA or Cosmos). He gnawed pencils down without a notebook to write in, yellow paint torn off by his teeth. He only went back down to his pit when Carl came home, shoulders tensed, face mutinous and eyes alternately drugged-glassy or jonesing-wide. Whatever work they got done must happen in the evenings, she supposed.

She’d been doing her best to ignore him before, the way he ignored her. Anything but acknowledge that she was living with him, like Dan had. Anything but consider what he knew about how she lived her life.

She started spending hours at a time at the library, because it was free and distant. She didn’t check the books out or bring them home; Carl would have questions. For some reason West didn’t tell, or didn’t care. She became particular in her tastes, cautious of the books that boasted rakes or wild men--they made her heart beat fast in a bad way, memories thick and vicious in her chest.

One night she became engrossed, only roused from her status as a fixture by the librarian’s soft hand on her shoulder prompting a rush of adrenaline.

Closing. Closing time, she understood finally, backing away from the cutting sympathy and worry in the woman’s eyes.

Closing time was six, she was late, Carl would--

She fairly ran home, hoping against hope to beat Carl’s beige Lincoln, but there it was in the driveway.

He wasn’t in the kitchen, tapping his toe and dripping concern. Nor in the living room with a beer. Nor even waiting in ambush in the bedroom, and how was she feeling this, this terror at  _ not _ being in his grip?

Not knowing was awful.

And then she eased open the basement door, tiptoed carefully down the first few awful steps. Just far enough. Too far.

She'd never seen Herbert naked before. Had only once seen him in less than shirtsleeves and tie, in fact, and even that had felt like some rare violation (though Dan had been there, and she'd felt like she was intruding then too). It was somehow a shock to see how pale he was, how close in shade his chest was to the dirty white fabric hanging open around it. 

All his blood seemed to have rushed downward, done up in pink and lace that she couldn't say for sure wasn't hers. It fit, only barely, making West's evident arousal look more like strangulation. His face, too, was stained pink, thighs trembling as he worked against  _ something _ (she was glad that she couldn't see, that Carl's broad back was in the way, his voice laughing and his hand moving unmistakably--)

She stumbled her way back upstairs without thinking, trying to do anything but think. Her mind was processing only slowly: first and overwhelmingly,  _ what the hell _ , and  _ how long _ and  _ does this mean I'll get sick _ (she knew better, she'd read the reports, but it didn't stop the thoughts).

And belatedly, so far after it was an afterthought, when she was huddled on the couch,  _ I should say something _ . She'd always prided herself on being someone who knew when things were wrong. That if the time came to witness something unspeakable, she wouldn't stand aside and let it happen. And West's face had been unmistakably miserable,  eyes downcast and looking anywhere but where he was. She knew that look.

Carl didn’t notice anything wrong with her (anything  _ else _ wrong with her) when he finally came upstairs, after a few hours, after she heard the whooshing of the pipes that meant someone was using the standing-room-only shower down in the corner of the cellar. She was glad, distantly, that she’d done laundry that morning, if they were going to be low on hot water.

He hadn’t even noticed she was gone.

“Ah, Meg,” Hill said to her, smiling and--satisfied--and he kissed her neck. “Have a good nap?”

“What?”

“You didn’t welcome me home tonight. Feeling better?”

Let him think his damned pills were drugging her senseless. One less thing to threaten her, at least, if he hadn’t  _ checked _ .

He ordered Chinese food, and West didn’t come upstairs.

He kissed her and touched her and she felt like the lowest thing in the world up in his bed, but he didn’t come inside her, and she hated knowing why. Hated the relief she felt,  _ had been _ feeling whenever he didn’t.

“Herbert,” she said two days later, after another day of seeing West curled up on the couch until Carl dragged him back downstairs. (It hadn’t been a fluke. And they weren’t lovers. She’d put a glass to the door and heard words, cries,  _ sounds _ , and Carl must not have finished that time, because he’d fucked her hard before dinner was even on the table.)

West was vibrating with nervous energy and rubbing his temples, not even reading or scribbling in his beaten copy of  _ Frankenstein, _ and he didn’t respond.

“Herbert,” she tried again. There was a bruise on his throat.

“What!?” he snapped, teeth bared between chapped, peeling lips.

Her conviction wavered. "You should eat something." 

"I'm fine." He was trying to look through her. "Is that all?" 

"I..." she bit her lip. "no. I know--about what's been happening with you, and," 

"So you've come to gloat." He sat up, all that tension now focused on her. "Pleased that I've lowered myself to your level?"

"I'm just trying to--" She bristled, trying to remind herself that he was suffering too. He didn't exactly make empathy easy. If he was even capable of feeling it. She forced herself to take a deep breath through her nose. "I know this is hard. For both of us." 

"Really." His eyes were squinting and dangerous. "What exactly do you know, Ms. Halsey? The inconvenience of opening your legs for a different man than the one you'd planned on? The distraction of playing house while important discoveries go to waste? You must have great skill at hiding bruises." 

"Why do you have to be such an asshole?" She struck the arm of the couch, powerless again to do anything but seethe. He was too pathetic to even hit. "Would it kill you to acknowledge i'm trying to be nice?"

“There’s no one to perform for, you ridiculous bitch! You’re  _ allowed _ to hate me!” He stood up so fast their heads almost collided, then wavered and sat back down just as quickly, anger on his face at his mutinous limbs nearly covering the disgust.

“I don’t  _ hate _ you!” she said, nearly meaning it, and  caught his arm.

“Why  _ not _ ?!” He yelled, spraying her with spit. His eyes were hazel, under the tears and bloodshot.

“Your pulse is too fast.” She avoided the question and looked away; the welling pain seemed too private a thing for her to see from this strange little man.

“It’ll pass.” He tried to tug out of her grasp. She shouldn’t hold on; she knew better. But he didn’t seem frightened of her touch, and she didn’t want to let him escape.

(Selfish, but she wanted to talk for her own sake at least as much as his.)

“Really. You don’t have to--you--” Sweat popped out on his forehead, and she dug in her nails, just a little. “It’s all my fault. Admit you enjoy it.”

She nearly slapped him, the wrong meaning hitting her brain viscerally long before the correct one processed, and then she choked.  _ Enjoy _ knowing that he was--

“I don’t hate you,” she said again, clutching his arm to her chest and meaning it. You’d have to hate someone to want that for them. And of all the things she was angry at him for--all the things she hated  _ about _ him--she'd never blamed him for Dan's death. No more than she blamed herself, anyway. Slowly, trying not to spook him, she lowered herself onto the coffee table across from him. 

"I just want all of this to stop," she confided.

"It can," he returned with no hesitation, just as he had in those early days. She shouldn't have expected less from a man who killed cats so he could experiment on them. 

"Not like that." She couldn't bring herself to think of causing the death of another human being. That horror came from the same part of her that had always thought she would stand up for others. Maybe that's why she responded all the more fiercely. "There has to be another way." 

"There isn't." He was staring at her intently, not looking through her but actually  _ at _ her. "A man like Hill is hardly worth the effort." 

He wasn't. But she was, or whatever was left of her sanity and ethical standing.. And not knowing how to phrase that certainty, she changed the subject. "How long has he..."

West shut down again, mouth twisting into a snarl. "Long enough." 

"I'm sorry." It was a meaningless phrase, but what else could she say? "I know..." 

"You don't." He sounded tired.

“He does it to me, too.” Saying it out loud made it sound small. She cleared her throat. “He--rapes me, too.” She said the word in a low whisper, like cussing for the first time when she was eight.

West shuddered, revulsion on his odd face. She felt it where his knee brushed hers.

“At least you have something to compare it to,” he said lowly, exposed somehow just as if he’d stripped naked for her.

“I thought you were…” She trailed off when his eyes caught hers, bleak. She’d thought, at the worst times, that maybe he and Dan. She’d hated him for that, too.

“Whatever I am,  _ he _ hates me. He’s trying to break me.” He rubbed his mouth with his free hand, then took off his glasses and pressed the heel of it deep into the left eye socket. “Trying to make me say no.”

That night, he went down with Hill. She didn’t try to stop it, and didn’t look him in the eye when it happened. She just sat, and knew, and waited.

She began to hate  _ someone _ , but it wasn’t West.

 

~*~*~*~

 

He felt exposed. Humiliating, to have Hill on him like this, night after night, demanding not so much sex as  _ abasement _ , and his only consolation had been that no one else had to know. As long as his body was being made to do those things, sometimes helped along by a blunt mental  _ tug _ that forced his hands or his mouth into actions he’d never considered in the past--at least he’d been alone in it.

“That’s it,” Hill said, sitting on a creaky wheeled desk chair, hands on Herbert’s hips. “So pretty. You can feel it, can’t you?”

Of course Herbert could feel it, grinding against his reddened, painful ass as he worked his hips. Hill still had his pants on. Herbert--did not. The handprints burned, and bruises didn’t fade the way they used to.

“What a naughty slut,” that horrible voice continued as long fingers rubbed his cock through lace. “You can call me Hans if it would make this easier.”

Death. Death wasn’t enough--he’d kill him and bring him back to take apart piece by piece for that slander alone. He’d--

Another hand grasped his throat while something  _ else _ gripped his mind. “Careful, there. You don’t want to disap _ point _ me, do you?”

He did, but he needed the fix--his body was as weak as his mind, as weak as when he’d let Dan die. And he needed his notes, what was left of his brilliance, wherever Hill had squirreled them away. So, trembling, he did as he was bidden, bent over the sorry excuse for a lab table and flinched through the tearing of the panties, the mocking touches. The mocking  _ words _ .

“Earn it, West,” Hill growled, low in his throat, before slapping him again on the backside like an unruly child. “One way or another.”

Worth it. Worth it, not to grant him a single additional golden egg. However bad this got--he wouldn’t go back, and so he must go through, head down and tattered will guiding him.

He didn’t want to call Hill Hans, dirty something good and kind with this. He loathed that he  _ did _ want to use another name, from another person just as blameless. He bit his tongue bloody instead.

(His first sight of Dan had been naked, and that thought had stayed quietly in the back of his mind through it all, unaddressed and idle; now that it was a dead end, he found himself keeping it with a pointless ferocity). 

Hill made no attempts with gentleness, nor

anything more than the most basic lubrication. He was wary enough to watch for blood, at least in protection of his own self interest. 

"I'm doing you a favor," Hill hissed another time as one of his large hands pressed Herbert's cheek against the concrete. "I have a wet little cunt waiting for me upstairs. I don't need to entertain your aberrant fixations." 

Cold, slick metal slid inside him, deeper than Hill could've reached, and punishingly broader at the tip (surgical spoons didn't cut; it didn't stop him from holding painfully still). Herbert tightened his jaw, breathing through his nose. 

"If only you'd been this quiet while I demonstrated these devices in class." Hill was laughing, always laughing at him, reminding him that mere endurance wasn't enough. When he refused to play along Hill loved nothing more than reaching into his head, into those responsive little bundles of nerves and pressing until Herbert's body mutinied against his careful control. 

When he didn't, it was worse. 

"I can't say I'm enjoying myself." Hill sounded so mournful. "It may be time to renegotiate our terms. I have colleagues who would be eager to speak with you. Their events could use a guest of honor."    
Herbert's fantasies had graduated now to vivisection, bright and vivid and slow enough for lifetimes.

It twisted, inside, and Herbert made a strangled sound, arching up and back and away though there was no escape.

“Feels good,  _ Mr. _ West?” He hissed the sibilants, savoring as always the opportunity to remind Herbert of his lost hopes and the title he’d never hold. “Or would you rather return to work?”

_ Boy like that won’t amount to anything-- _

“No,” he gasped, shuddering, even as his hand went below himself and began to squeeze and stroke. It felt like someone else, when this happened. Like a different person touching him. Not himself, nor Hill, either. Outside the sum total of his experience, and clean. “Please,” he whimpered, like a weakling, and tried not to hear Hill’s chuckle.

Tried not to play to it; if he was good enough, he’d get his dose. If he wasn’t--

Hill would still get his filthy rocks off, one way or another. He had options. Upstairs.

Herbert lifted up, one palm braced on the concrete, that hand working, working, the spoon jutting from him like a vulgar tail. The touch was good, he told himself. Clean. He wanted that gentleness, skilled confident man’s hands on him like they  _ cared _ , like he wasn’t worthless. Like he wasn’t some filthy, girlish, squealing  _ whore _ .

The spoon hurt on its way out. Its replacement hurt more.

Megan would only need to spend half an hour in the shower tomorrow morning, Herbert thought with the part of his brain not held like an egg in a fist nor drowning itself in a fantasy of a dead man.

After, with filth still dripping down Herbert's thighs, Hill shook his head sadly and told him he'd forgotten the dose in his office.

 

~*~*~*

 

West came back around a few weeks later. This time he sought Meg out in the bedroom, unsteady but standing and completely nonplussed by the fact that she was in her underwear, little blue pill in her hand.

"Throw that away." There were beads of sweat on his forehead from the simple effort of climbing to the second floor.

"Go away." She wasn't in the mood to deal with him, not when she could still feel Hill inside of her, calling her his--

She shuddered, and brought the pill to her mouth. Quicker than she'd thought he could move West grabbed her wrist, dumping the pill to the ground and crushing it beneath his heel. 

"We don't have time," he said. "Hill left this morning, didn't he?"

"Yes." He hadn't said to where -- or maybe he had. She tried not to be inside her own body when he was, distant and disinterested as she watched a doll of herself. "So what? Planning to leave?" She found herself strangely frightened by the thought of being the only one left in this Hell.

"I can't. I need you." He seemed thoroughly disgusted by the notion. 

"Forget it." Once, she hadn't even thought West knew what sex  _ was _ (it hadn't mattered whether he'd intended to fuck Dan; he'd been stealing him all the same). Now--she wouldn’t be a way for him to reclaim some pitiful manhood.

"Don't flatter yourself," he sneered, and she slapped him because she could. It was a relief. And he kept talking. "You trained as a nurse." 

"A CNA." It had been an accepted pasttime, a glorified candystriper while waiting to get that coveted, respectable MRS.

"Fine. I need you to stand watch while I dry out. Tie me down if you have to." West kept wiping at his mouth as he spoke, a new and strange nervous habit.

”What?” It had never even occurred to her that West might want anything besides the drugged haze he inhabited. “I’m not qualified for that.” Easy excuse, considering--

“I’m not  _ qualified _ for anything, but here we are.” His laughter needed its own dictionary. This one was high, and cruel, and  _ sad _ .  “You’re a warm body, and you dislike me. That will make it easier.” He thrust a small bottle and a manicure case (a works kit, Jesus Christ--) into her unsteady hands and nodded as though it were settled.

“Why would how I  _ feel _ matter?” She clutched the things close, hugging over her chest despite how he didn’t stare.

“You won’t be tempted to make the pain stop. I have nothing to offer you, and you might even enjoy seeing me suffer.”

She should be the better person. Should reassure him that she cared, but.

He had a bed, it turned out--a small, squeaky camp cot in the basement, thin pillows and thinner blankets on the bare mattress. He had to shove stacks of books off it, unreasonably gentle with the most useless ones.

“Science fiction holds the real answers, Meg,” he said in response to her quizzical stare. There was something loaded in his gaze when he stacked those little pulp reprints in the foot-or-less of clearance beneath the bed while tossing medical texts across the room. “When it’s not just horror, of course.”

It was cold, too cold for the powder-blue peignoir she wore, but she couldn’t bring herself to wear her old sweaters and slacks most of the time. They belonged to a time and a person she’d lost. And West didn’t care, anyway.

He sat on the edge of the cot, hands flexing. "I received a partial dosage from that bottle two days ago. What's left in my system is running out. It shouldn't be long."    
"So we just...wait?" She shifted from foot to foot, trying not to shiver. 

"Change into something warmer. It gets colder in the dark." He'd been watching her; it caught her by surprise, made her feel infinitesimally warmer for no good reason at all. Simple human courtesy was at a premium these days. 

"Get belts while you're up there. If he doesn't already have something intended for the purpose." West's lip curled in distaste, the same as it did in response to any notion of contact. 

"Fine." In for a penny. What else was she to do, anyway? She was too "nervous" to go back to school or get a job. The idea of trying to play house made her sick, like acquiescing to the fact that she wasn't just in Hill's "care." If she did that, she'd have to admit that she knew Daddy was beyond help, and that some part of her only wanted to see him in order to put him out of his clear misery. She owed him that, and she'd signed power of attorney over to Hill. She'd signed her own internment papers, waiting on his favor.

Social events seemed impossibly taxing. Her friends had all graduated and gone in the weeks following "the incident," and she hadn't been able to bear their eggshell sympathetic looks, anyway.  At this point, she was as sorry and pathetic as West. A trophy with nothing to do but contemplate taking up drinking.   
She put on a bathrobe and pulled a pair of leather belts from the back of the closet. She didn't look to see if there was anything "more." It was entirely possible that West’s sneering covered something that had already happened, and she didn’t want to know. 

She expected a snide remark when she returned, but West was only sitting on the cot, contemplating his hands. The only sign that he'd moved was a spindly chair pulled up next to the bed. He eyed the belts in her hand. "I suppose it will be easier while I'm conscious."

He took one from her and wrapped it around his wrist, securing it with some difficulty to an exposed bit of pipe running along the wall.  Already he had a thin sheen of sweat on his face. 

"Now we....wait?" she was still standing. 

"You'll have to secure the other one when things get worse." When, not if. "But yes. We wait."

He was a small man--smaller yet than he’d been when he bought his way into Dan’s life. His face was spare, lacking flesh, and his neck thinned. He looked skeletal, burned down to the bone, and she wondered how long he could’ve kept going at all on the drugs.

The basement was… there was nothing there. He spent so much time there, and it was  _ empty. _ A half-assed lab setup even she recognized as less advanced than what he’d cobbled together on his own, a few clothes hung from exposed piping, the bed, and the books. No television.

When she asked about  _ music _ , he gestured vaguely at an unplugged clock/radio.

She could bring down something of her own to occupy the time, but her romances were less comforting now. Too many wards and kidnappings. It was distant in those pages as it wasn’t here.

So for the first while, she just watched him, sweat rising on his brow and lids twitching.

“You could read one of my books,” he said at last, when she’d zoned out for a good half hour. He sounded oddly nervous. “They might not be to your--taste--”

“Obviously I’m too stupid to like aliens and robots.”

“You’re not stupid.” She shouldn’t feel gratified by the matter-of-fact statement. “But I chose them because they spoke to me. And I know that I’m not… normal.” His breath was shallow, and his eyes still closed.

She picked up one with a name she remembered from Star Trek. Sturgeon.

And she cleared her throat.

“Bianca’s mother was leading her when Ran saw her first…”

West gave no sign that he either liked or disliked it, but she chose to call it a kindness in her own mind. Something she could point to as a “good” act, when she’d done so few. Her goodness before had been a lack of evil.

And yes, the stories weren’t normal.

They were  _ sad _ .

There was an aching undercurrent to the words, a sense of emptiness and being a capital-O Outsider with no hope of changing that. Wrong, from the word go. 

She'd wondered about West, of course, in the passing way any normal person dedicated a few moments to sussing out the "whys" in meeting someone different from themselves. She hadn't wondered nearly so much as Dan, who'd asked for her "woman's intuition" in the same breath he asked her to understand that this was Important Work, that even if West was "like that" he was brilliant, and he had to help.  _ You understand, don't you? _ Like it wasn't his cat that had been murdered. 

West coughed, and she put down the book long enough to hand him a rapidly emptying glass of water. He looked as if he'd drenched himself in it, and he was shuddering so badly she had to tie the thin blanket around his shoulders. 

"Why did you stay?" she asked, curiosity the better part of boredom. She'd heard Dad talking about the risks in taking West on, the supposedly disastrous cloud of scandal that followed him around.    
"He took my notes," West was looking up at nothing. "I'm not a computer. I need the written formulas. The data." 

"And the drugs?" She was surprised he was humoring her at all. Delirium, probably. 

"I needed to work faster when I arrived here. Time was of the essence. I took...shortcuts."

“But now?” He felt fevered, and she wanted to fetch the thermometer from the first aid kit in the master bathroom, but she didn’t want to get up and leave him.

He leaned into the touch, just a little.

“Now?” His eyes didn’t really track, and she plucked the glasses from his face in a move half-kindness, half flinch. He looked tired without them.

“Why do you stay now?” There was a sink, at least, down in this hellhole; she filled the cup there and returned, trying not to think about how his squint tried and failed to follow her.

“I owe too much.”

She’d always thought him a thief; he’d stolen her Dan after all. (Even if she’d planned to let him go eventually.)

“To  _ him _ ?” It was possible, she supposed. Given Hill’s influence over Daddy, he could have pulled strings to bring West to Miskatonic. He was willing to go to lengths, for things he--wanted.

“The only thing I owe him is death. And castration.” His expression went dreamy as he panted a bit and wiped sweat from his upper lip.

“Why does he do it?” She’d never asked. “He hates you."

"Enough to relish the sight of my humiliation," West said. "All the toothpaste there is wouldn't wash that taste out." 

"I envy you." She didn't know why she said it, except that there seemed no reason not to. They were sitting in a fever dream, where West bothered to talk to her and someone actually listened to what she had to say.

"I didn't expect sympathy, but I did think you'd try for tact." West's dry laugh became a cough. She had to hold the water for him now. 

"At least for you it always hurts." She felt no need to spare Hill's feelings like she had Dan's. That had made it all the worse when she'd felt herself responding to that awful, slimy tongue, trapped somewhere in her head while Hill opened her up and tasted her orgasm on his lips.

“It always… especially when he…” he made a gesture with his free hand, near his belt. “Why does he force it?” He sounded childishly lost of a sudden. “Autonomic responses shouldn’t matter.”

His hips writhed, suddenly, and he rolled into a position that must have been painful with the tied arm. “Whatever I am--how dare he take that from me.”

“I. He.” She bit her lip. “He likes to feel.” Her gorge rose, and she wasn’t the one in withdrawals. “Wanted.”

“That’s not want.” His voice was ugly, but she wondered how much of that was that he only ever talked of ugly things. Or perhaps just the ugliness of truth itself. “He manipulates the nerves. It’s  _ violent _ , whether or not it does--” His shoulders shuddered, worse when she reached out and touched them.

“We have the choice,” she whispered, the ugliness she feared.

“No.  _ No _ , it’s not a choice,” he gasped. His wrist worked within the restraint. “I never. Even when I thought I wanted, I never. And you didn’t--you had better. You know better. You--you--” The strangled sounds he made were half-cough and all weakness.

"You're hurting yourself." She reached out to readjust him, and he jerked out of her touch. 

"Tie the other one," he managed, hair stuck to his forehead and muscles straining. It was much harder now that he was all but convulsing, keeping the urge to beg her for help just behind his teeth. She knew the feeling. 

"It doesn't matter," she said after a long time, when West had wrung himself out and lay lax on the thin sheets. His skin had taken on a greenish hue. "If we were stronger, we'd leave." It was dangerous, thinking of them as a unit. West would run as soon as he could, clearly.

"You would think that." He smelled terrible, old sweat layered on top of new. "You couldn't even win a fight with Dan." 

"I wasn't trying to win," she snapped at the raw nerve. "After all this, you still think of people like puppets?" 

"We are." He seemed oddly philosophical, the tears hidden. "Pluck the right strings and watch us dance. Sex or fear, humans are a predictable bundle of chemicals. Hill thinks he's the best at the game. It's going to make him sloppy." 

"You're really going to do it." It wasn't awe she was feeling. Respect, maybe.

"That's the least of what I'll do." 

The grey light of dawn was coming in through the storm window. She probably had bags under her eyes.

"What did you do with Dan?" 

"Buried him." Herbert shrugged minutely. 

"You're going to lie now?"

“Mourned him, then,” and she hadn’t expected that. His voice spoke to a grief his awkwardness couldn’t possibly feign. Damn him; he wasn’t supposed to  _ feel _ . Except that it made her feel just a little less alone.

Precision in words was what he demanded, and so she inhaled deep before trying again.

“What did you do with the body?” She was still imagining a kiss out of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty; something on which to found her suspicions.

“Embalmed it. I can fix it, you know.” Raw silk. “I can, if you’ll help.” His smile was almost sweet. “Just--I wasn’t thinking clearly. I haven’t for a while.”

“You’re insane.”

“Probably. But you don’t know what I can do.” (She’d tried not to. The suspicions alone were awful. Unnatural.) His body rolled, facing her as best he could while tied. Probably bad for the tendons in his wrists, but it was only one night. She wouldn’t do this again. “You still have that bottle, with my dose in it. It’s a start.”

She set the cup on the floor, removed his tie, and unbuttoned his collar. He had to be choking like that. And when she was that close, bent over him, he whispered, “It makes me smarter.”

His pupils were dilated, his face eerily open. "I'll need it back," he confided. 

"I don't think that's a good idea." It frightened her more than anything else about him, this sudden fragility.

He clapped his free hand over his face, letting loose an unhinged cackle that fit his transformation into a joke of a mad scientist. "You don't think," he said. "You'd rather pretend you can't."

"Go to sleep," she said through gritted teeth, holding onto just enough restraint not to hit an invalid. 

He stopped laughing quite suddenly, his hand sliding down his face in slow motion. As if by magic, she could see the haggard lines in his face, the green-turned-grey pallor of his skin. He hadn't thrown up through all of it, but it seemed mostly down to an empty stomach. He stared at her so long, eyes flat and unblinking, that for a minute she thought he'd finally died. A fitting and ignoble end for his delusions of grandeur. But a few minutes later his eyes fell closed, and his breathing began to even out.

She took the bottle and needles with her when she went upstairs, hiding them at the bottom of the small bag she'd brought "for a few days" three months ago. 

 

~*~*~*~

 

It had been a necessary gamble. It didn't stop Herbert from feeling like he'd been hit by a train when he came to, muscles aching and throat raspy and cracked. He'd untied himself slowly and methodically, fingers numb and clumsy, and finished off the still-cool water left there (full, strangely enough). He was alone. Unsurprising. He hadn't asked her to do more than keep him alive, after all. 

He allowed only a few minutes to the panic in the back of his mind a how slowly his thoughts now processed, how petty issues like exhaustion and hunger nipped at his heels and brought him down to normal mortality like everyone else. He could get it back. He could be what he was, when he could control his own supply. For now, he'd taken a weapon out of Hill's arsenal, even if he lost a whole day after waking to the slow, slow recovery of who and where he was.

He washed in the basement shower, uncomfortable as he hadn’t been before with the lack of a curtain and the creeping mold around the drain. It felt like something was sloughing off when he scrubbed down with a dried-up cake of yellow soap.

He brushed his teeth three times, spitting out the blood-tinged foam as usual. Mouthwash stung and numbed.

No mirror, but he knew how to comb his hair.

And then, once he dressed again in the least soiled things he owned, there was no more point in delaying.

The stairs creaked; in his drugged stupor, he hadn’t learned, as Hill had, to avoid making sounds on them, to creep in and stand behind, unnoticed until body heat and breath in a ear alerted-- The cellar door flew open more forcefully than necessary, and Herbert half stumbled into the kitchen.

Hunger was a weakness. His cousin up in the asylum screamed about it, when he spoke at all.

(The reagent helped keep his thoughts organized and emotions controlled. This  _ chaos _ needed to end.)

The sandwich he made turned out turkey, mayonnaise, lettuce, onion, salt and pepper. No tomato. Not what Herbert ate; rather, a trancelike memory of the last sandwich he’d made for someone else.

His stomach revolted when he shoved it in his mouth, but he forced it down, swallowed the unfamiliar pain of food in his body.

"What's your plan?" Meg was standing across the table, and he hadn't noticed her coming in. His head was surrounded on all sides by cotton. He'd made a mistake. He was  _ more _ useless like this. 

"What did you do with that vial?" He put the half-eaten sandwich down. 

"It's safe." She was dressed today, not like a broken femme fatale in a clinging, neglected negligee, but the clothes he remembered her in.

"Give it to me." He could save it til the right moment, use the rush to get the jump on Hill, bash his head in until it was so much meat on the concrete floor.

"No." She folded her arms, acting like he was a child asking for dessert before dinner. 

"I don't have time for your moral high ground. I can't work like this.  _ Give me that vial." _ The shakes and pain were gone, but in its place was an unbearable sense of emptiness. "We're both doomed if you leave me like this. Unless you really  _ do _ enjoy being Hill's little pet." 

Her eyes widened for just a second, then grew hard. "You won't find it. Get over it and do something." 

"You little--"

"Unless you like being a washed up junkie." She put her hands on the table, playing her best card. "Dan believed in you." 

They glared at each other across the table, each now balanced with the power to drag the other down.

“Dan was very… supportive,” Herbert said in an attempt at politeness, a sop of praise for their mutual loss. It backfired somehow, her face screwing up into a scowl.

She’d always been selfish with Daniel.

“He held an elevated belief in my abilities,” he tried again. “Like… Hill. Like you, if you think I can just--” He dropped the half-eaten sandwich and buried his hands in his hair. “I’m too  _ weak _ !”

“Suck it  _ up _ , West!” She slammed her palms down on the table, and he flinched.

Weak. Weak.  _ Suck it _ \--

He hoped the kitchen sink had a garbage disposal. The sandwich didn’t look fully chewed.

His throat burned with acid, burning away a layer of cells soon to be replenished if he could just furnish matter for it to build from, and there were bruises on his wrists. Hill hadn’t needed to tie his hands.

“Jesus,” Meg was there, behind him, touching his neck with her soft lotion-smelling hand, and she wasn’t him. She would never. She was. She.

“It won’t  _ stop _ !” he snarled, vomit on his lips. “I can’t fail again, and I can’t do it alone, you--”

“I’m sorry,” she cut him off before he could widen the gap further. "I'll help you,: she murmured, as if they might be heard. He could hear her voice shaking. "We'll work together."

"Then--"

"Not with that. If he doesn't come back at the right time, you'll be right back where you were before." She leaned forward, resting head against his back. "You're losing your touch." She was nearly as tall as him.

"Don't touch me." There was no rage in it. Just exhaustion. 

She retreated to the table. sinking into the chair he'd occupied. "It doesn't solve anything," she said. "He'll still have my dad's papers. You'll still be expelled. It's stupid." 

"Yes," he allowed, sensing what would come next. Sure enough, she fisted one hand in her hair.

"But I want to hurt him. That bastard. I want..." her eyes were red and raw and out of tears. 

He turned on the tap and washed his mouth clean, taking a few swallows of water to clear his head. Still fuzzy. But it couldn't be that difficult to find his vial in an emergency. He sat next to her, not across, refusing to acknowledge his paranoia at how  _ that man _ seemed an almost supernatural presence in their lives, but heeding it all the same. "You're going to be helping a lot with this. Get ready to be an accomplice." 

 

~*~*~*~

 

_ “He'll want to see you first." West had looked certain, still drawn and exhausted looking but driven by some horrible internal flame. “I trust you can manage some acting." _

As if horror was something she'd needed to fake for even a minute since Daddy died (she hated that she still called him that, and yet it felt disrespectful to the dead to change it). She put on silk and straps and did her hair up like a doll, still not sure whether it was worse to think of who had worn these clothes before her, or if they'd been bought just to fit her frame.

(Or if someone else had worn them since.)

The front door opened with the click of a guillotine being loosed, and she crept to the landing on the stairs with one strap of the thin, sheer material falling from her narrow shoulder. 

"Carl!" She threw herself into his arms the second she saw him, pretending as though her trembling was with relief. "Thank God you're back. It's...he's..." she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder, arching her back ever so slightly so that her breasts pressed against him. 

"There, there." She could feel his hand on the small of her back 'supporting' her, reaching down to cup her ass. "I'm here for you now." 

"You left me here with that monster..." she'd survived so much worse than this. This shouldn't feel impossible. "He was acting *crazy.* I had to lock him in the basement. I--he tried to--" 

"Just tell me what happened." His breath was hot against her neck, his calming voice at odds with the erection pressed against her thigh. "I'm sure it will keep a while longer." 

"Carl,"  _ pretend you like it, just pretend _ . "I can't concentrate. I keep thinking I killed him. I'm scared to go alone." 

"I assure you, my dear, you'd be doing the world a service." But he tensed even while patting her head fondly, like she was still young enough to wheedling into calling him  _ uncle _ . "Let's put your fears to rest, shall we?" 

(And his fears. He kept West around for a reason, and it wasn’t his sexual charms.)

He let her huddle behind him as they approached the basement door, locked just as she'd said. She wavered there on the threshold as he started to descend. 

_ Do it quick, _ West's voice said in her mind.  _ The further he falls, the better odds of snapping a critical bone. _ The stairs were long and rickety, and seemed to sway in her vision.  _ Think of his hands _ . She thought of what he'd done to Daddy, to Dan. What he'd keep doing to her. Imagined swelling with his child, looking at that face for the rest of her life--

She reached out, outside of herself, and pushed hard on his back.

He yelped, absurdly startled given his obvious monstrosity, and pitched forward. Down, end over end, like Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live, but painful.

Bump-bump-bump-thud- _ crunch _ -WHAM.

The crunch got her hopes up. Wrongly; he groaned, and then shifted. One of his arms failed, but that’s all. Just an  _ arm, _ when she’d psyched herself up to kill--

And then Herbert struck, like the mongoose from The Jungle Book. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, leaping on the snake. Hissing, snarling, his face twisted and almost inhuman with the mask off, and she didn’t fear it. He didn’t have sharp teeth, but that’s what the needle was for.

_ ”Air embolism,” he’d said from across the room, arms wrapped about himself as she evacuated the syringe into the sink. “Surely you learned about that sort of incompetence in school?” _

And the thin steel tube went into Carl’s long neck, so fast and so terrifyingly slow, just a second but too long. Because Carl met Herbert’s wide, rolling eyes, and Herbert stilled.

“Good,” Carl said, reaching out with his working hand. “Good, you little--help me up, Mr. West.”

His touch looked deceptively gentle, as it always was, and Herbert’s shoulders slumped. He was so small, and had he never…?

No one ever touched him. No one but her, and that wasn’t the same. So she almost couldn’t fault the tremor in him, the way his hand tangled with Carl’s for a moment.

“Good,” that horrible low voice’s praise would haunt her dreams. “I’ll reward you for this--”

And then the plunger depressed, sending that bubble of nothing into evil veins.

It couldn't have been longer than a few seconds before it started to take effect, but it felt slower. She was waiting for him to get up, to grab her and wrap his hands around her throat and turn her into a dead-eyed puppet just like her dad. 

Then, a twitch, A rattling groan rose from Carl's body, and then he spasmed. 

_ The brain is resilient. _ Herbert had told her.  _ We may have a long six minutes on our hands _ . And then he'd given a vicious little smile. Hope rose in her as she watched their mutual tormentor's body begin to convulse, bloody mucus streaming from his nose. But then he was on his knees, reaching out as West skittered back and cornered himself. 

"Stop!" She shouted, and his eyes fixed on her, his smile demented. He thought she was there to save him. 

"Meg..." He came crawling up the stairs hand over hand, still shaking and seemingly able to move by sheer force of will. His arm -- long, impossibly long -- reached out and grabbed her ankle, and she screamed. She'd put on heels, thin and pointed and impractical for anything but the shape of her ass, and now in a moment of panic she shook her foot to try and dislodge him, holding tight to the railing. 

She slipped.

Her ankle twisted under her, and the point of her heel gashed itself across Carl's cheek. They stared at each other, across another few eternal seconds. 

"You traitorous bitch!" He was pulling at her now, trying to pull her down with him. She did the only thing she could think of: up came her foot, the tip of the heel dotted with blood, and she kicked down toward his face. She meant to shock him into letting go, falling down the steps so that it would be over. Instead she landed and kept going, the back of her shoe sliding through something soft and wet and gelatinous. Her screams filled her own ears, serving no purpose but to drown out his as he clutched at her, as she brought her foot down a second time, and a third, until she felt his hands loosen and give way, and he was sliding -- sliding, not falling down the stairs, already limp long before six minutes could've possibly passed. 

She sat down at the top of the stairs, her knees no longer capable of supporting her, and clasped both hands to her mouth.

“Well.” Herbert stumbled to the foot of the stairs, sitting down in a clumsy mirror of her own posture. “Well.” He laughed, high and a bit hysterical, and it was a good sound despite the horror.

“He’s dead,” she said, too flat for a woman with eyeball on her shoe.

“Yes. I should--” his hand trembled, reaching out for the ankle of the definite corpse stalled a few steps above him. “It’s. When I have my reagent again--it would be a waste.”

“No.” She knew they could be harmless, or dangerous. She’d seen what her father did to Dan’s corpse, not to mention the bites he’d inflicted on Herbert’s cradling, protective, useless body.

“I can. You don’t know--I can do it, it’s a waste. I need to test it.” He was breathing too fast. She had to half-crawl down, past her Uncle Carl’s horrible, limp,  _ live-warm _ body to touch his shoulder.

” _ No _ , Herbert.” She put her hands on his face, forced that hazel gaze to meet her own. “He has to stay dead.”

“But--”

“You know who we need to test it on.”

He tried to look away, to refocus on the corpse, but she held on tight. "I don't know if it will work," he half-whispered, the words barely formed as they left him. He looked fragile, fingers drumming on his knees. 

"Do--" she forced herself to breath. "Do you want to find out?" 

"An empty grave would be...convenient." They both started laughing at less than nothing, his hand resting on her shoulder when she started to shake. 

They spent the rest of the night cleaning the basement, bundling that long body up in trash bags and stumble-walking it into the back of the dead man's luxury car. Mostly it had been Herbert--once they were back upstairs he’d sat her at the kitchen table with an uncommon gentleness and wrapped her ankle, telling her to keep it elevated for 20 minutes and laughing when she asked where he’d learned how to be decent.

She’d heard him making a racket upstairs, ransacking Carl’s room (not hers, not anymore or ever) and then the rest of the house with increasingly frantic fury. He’d almost turned and punched her when she grabbed his shoulder, his eyes wide with panic. 

“The notes,” he said. “I need to find the notes.” 

“Not tonight,” she’d answered. “They’re probably at his office.” 

And in by far the strangest moment of the night, he’d relented. 

“I guess now they’ll think it was a robbery.” She’d laughed, surprised at her own numbness. 

In the basement, Herbert carefully gathered his dog-eared paperbacks together, hunching over the box of them as if they were the most precious treasure on Earth. Next to them he tucked a very small green bottle, no more than a travel-sized swig of mouthwash, which he produced from a carefully chipped away grotto in the wall. 

"I held onto it." He refused to elaborate further even as he scooped out the scraps of paper and replaced the false front. 

She changed into her last clean sweater and slacks, burning the lingerie in the ‘til-then purely ornamental fireplace. She watched the polyester go up with a sick sort of fascination, wondering whether she'd feel anything if she stuck her hand in, until West's snapping had shaken her back to reality. Whatever that was now. 

“If I help you,” she said, like it wasn’t a foregone conclusion, “I need you to help me with something too.” They were already criminals now. It was her duty to help one more walking corpse sleep. In for a penny. 

"Go to sleep," he'd said. "Tomorrow night is the most important of our lives." 

_ Our _ . Funny how that had happened. 

In the dead of night, no one saw two figures steal into what had once been called the potter's field, a strange misshapen burden with them. The unearthly scream that followed them would be remembered for years.


End file.
